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All wanting comes from need, therefore from lack, therefore from suffering.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on; borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous. Photography offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are its tormented souls.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
As a general rule, the longer a man's fame is likely to last, the later it will be in coming; for all excellent products require time for their development.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
If at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else... Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me?
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Truth is most beautiful undraped.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Just as one spoils the stomach by overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one has read. If one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later, what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and surprising combination of unedifying elements.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
The greatest intellectual capacities are only found in connection with a vehement and passionate will.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Ignorance is degrading only when found in company with great riches.
Arthur Schopenhauer -
Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.
Arthur Schopenhauer